


Instructions for a Body

by dire_quail



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Antagonist Surprises With Honorable Behavior, F/F, Falling for the Enemy - attempt at manipulation leads to feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 21:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21105995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/pseuds/dire_quail
Summary: Kateknowsthe girl who just walked in the door of the bar.





	Instructions for a Body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).

> Kate is post-series finale, Faith is immediately post-bodyswap and pre-going to LA. 
> 
> Title is from the poem "Instructions for a Body", by Marty McConnell.

Kate _knows_ the girl who just walked in the door. 

Kate knows a lot of things about her, actually: She’s American, out-of-towner, broke as shit (she still smells like the inside of a Greyhound). So she’s not here for pleasure, which is… well. People _do_ come through here “for pleasure”, but this isn’t exactly a tourist-y spot. 

And she’s a predator. 

The girl looks around the room—one _could_ believe she’s scanning for a table, and it is getting kind of busy—and the moment her eyes lock with Kate’s something spikes low in Kate’s gut, shocks hot down her spine, raises all the hairs on her neck. She hears something in her head, like a low rumble; a sinuous, inhuman weight in the turn of her head to look, like her other half is watching, too. Something sparks in the newcomer’s eyes, and she looks Kate up and down, slow and deliberate. 

And then she turns and walks to the end of the bar. 

There’s nothing signaturely supernatural in her scent—pure, stinking human. Her aura doesn’t have any of that telltale supernatural flash to it. Even her other half—weird twin? Whatever, it works—doesn’t seem to have a particular reaction to her. 

But Kate feels it, like lightning in her stomach. Maybe, for once, it’s a human thing. She does have _skills_ that aren’t related to whatever ties her to this place and the temple nearby. 

The girl doesn’t have the kind of comportment that Kate would associate with a soldier, or a hunter—even a lot of martial arts specialists she’s worked with. Her presence is about as “covert” as a werewolf in a shopping mall. She’s not a tracker; she’s a closer. She’s the one you send in to finish the job. 

There’s a limited number of reasons why anyone with this girl’s level of subtlety would just show up in these parts, so Kate kinda assumes she’s here to kill Kate from the beginning. Does that make her paranoid? Self-important? Maybe. 

But she hasn’t lived this long by being an extremely rational individual. 

Kate should probably kill her and be done with it—even if the girl hasn’t already figured out that Kate’s her target, if Kate leaves, the girl will keep coming. 

She doesn’t. Yet. 

//

Kate keeps one ear out, listening; to the girl’s voice, her heartbeat, her movements. Her heart rate is just shy of fast, for someone with her apparent conditioning. Alert, anticipating, but nothing indicating an attack is imminent. Kate likes the sound of her voice. She has a kind of drawl that Kate appreciates: Easy, laid-back, inviting. Like a big cat rolling around on its back in the grass. She flirts with the bartender, a couple of guys who come by. 

They never do see the claws. 

The music starts. A few songs in, Kate feels a body behind her—not squarely, but closer than anyone else has gotten all night. That raspy voice she’s been hearing from across the bar rumbles near her shoulder. Kate feels another spike—of interest? Anger? She’s certainly started fights over less. 

“_Two._” And a bill, passed around Kate’s body. The bartender replaces the bill with two shot glasses, and the girl reaches around to grab them. 

Kate doesn’t so much as give a sign she’s aware of her. 

Someone else would feel doubt, at this point; maybe this girl is just here to party. That’s part of this game. 

But it’s not just that Kate _invented_ this game (arguably, a newer part of her reflects, playing with one’s food is only natural). And it’s not the childhood trauma, either. 

Even before Peter infected her with his particular brand of beast, Kate has always been close with her instincts, the way any werewolf or monster is. Peter didn’t give it to her, Gerard didn’t give it to her, Tezcatlipotl couldn’t control her with them. 

Waiting is a dangerous game. It plays into the hands of people like Chris, like Gerard, who, like inertia, lack the immediacy of something like her—but over time, amass so much force that even an unassailable fortress like the Hale pack becomes vulnerable. 

But she _knows_ something. And her instincts have gotten her this far. 

She _knows_ this girl. She knows, before it happens, the body sliding into the seat next to her, the voice inviting and raspy, playful. She knows the line, too—some variation of _You wanna play?_

Kate still feels something curl in her, sharp and hot and cold at the same time, as the girl takes both her shots, exposing the line of her neck twice. The feeling is almost like surprise. Like _interest_. 

Almost like pleasure. She didn’t actually _expect_ her to do this. 

This one’s ballsy. 

And Kate knows the girl sitting next to her is someone she wants to play with. She knows the readiness radiating off her, the energy, the casual slouch like something crawling through the trees, watching, watching, the contemplative gaze—Yeah. Kate wants to play. 

She knows the girl knows it, too. 

She should leave. 

She doesn’t. 

//

_“We hunt those who hunt us.”_

And Faith is _definitely_ hunting Kate. Or is she? 

Faith—that was a careless move, telling Kate her real name. But it makes something clear, too. It tells Kate a little thing about her. She’s telling Kate dozens of little things, actually. About what she’s here for. About what she wants. And practically speaking, it doesn’t matter what Faith is _really_ here for, in some existential sense—if Kate doesn’t put up enough of a fight, Faith _will_ kill her. She’s not here to half-ass this job. 

But this girl doesn’t seem to care if Kate knows her name, her _real_ name, not some alias like the one Kate’s using, an artifact of her time working for Gerard professionally. There’s other… anomalies. Not signs of trust, not the way normal people give those off. These are things that make Kate wonder whether or not Faith actually cares if she gets out of this alive. 

This girl doesn’t care if she lives or not. Sooner or later, she won’t. In the meantime, she’s going to keep doing what she’s made to, til her luck runs out. 

Yeah. Kate knows Faith. 

And Kate would generally be happy to oblige. But it seems like a shame, as the one who’d be doing the job; Faith is _beautiful_—in her wildness, in her directness, in her abandon, in her desire, in her killing instinct, in her despair. Bright as a falling star. The way Faith’s hips hug hers, the rumble of her voice against Kate’s back, her throat almost within reach—all Kate would have to do is turn and bite. 

And out herself, but this town is like all the other small towns around the temple site. She can find another. She’s going to have to, regardless. 

Kate doesn’t know why she indulges; someone willing to die is even more dangerous. Maybe she’s flattered (though maybe she should be insulted) that whoever is trying to kill her wants to so badly they’re sending someone like _this_ after her. Maybe she’s just tickled by the idea of an audience that _appreciates_ what Kate does, who lives in the same world—equals, in a sense, though whatever kind of deadly this girl is, hers is definitely not the same brand as Kate’s. 

Or maybe she’s just bored and horny. She can only take so long playing metaphysical top to a bunch of demon bears. Even if it is a rush. 

Maybe it’s nostalgia; Kate remembers a lot of nights on the other side of this girl’s equation, tight shirt, tight jeans, hair down, a little liquor, a little something extra she stole from her—it was never Gerard’s, it was her mother’s, and then it was hers, it _should’ve_ been hers—stores, to get them to let their guard down. Not that she needed it. She proved that plenty. 

Maybe it's something else. 

_The shock and give in her thumbs as she breaks the little bone in each of them to wrench her hands through the handcuffs—one hand, then the other. It feels surprisingly easy, where so much of her training has felt so monotonous and difficult to work herself up to._

_The knife gleams in front of her. The werewolf’s face twists, and the bonds give, metal bending in a liquid way that only monstrous strength can make it move._

_“Do you know what happens if he breaks out before you get to that knife?” Gerard murmured, moments before, into her ear._

_“What happens?” When her father showed her the video of Chris’ turn in the chair, only a few years earlier. It had been hilarious—he’d freaked out, so completely and uselessly that he upset the chair and broke it. It was far from the story her older brother told her about how he saw the werewolf and went into a rage and broke the chair; he looked so_ stupid, _sitting on his ass, stunned that his hands were miraculously free. Her and Gerard both had laughed for almost ten minutes straight watching that video._

_This isn’t hilarious. The werewolf is snarling so loudly that it almost drowns out Gerard’s voice, but Kate’s body is a single wire of adrenaline focused on her father, sure on some level that he won’t leave her in here with this animal, he won’t_ not _intervene._

_Gerard tilted his head, clicking his tongue disapprovingly. “Don’t find out, Katie.”_

_Kate watches her father back across the mountain ash circle, sliding the door to the room shut. Beneath the werewolf’s increasing snarling and snapping as he recovers his senses and starts to shift, Kate’s racing brain clearly hears the lock click shut._

_And unlike the werewolf locked in the room with her, she doesn’t have the strength to wrench it open and get to safety._

Kate remembers the pain of dislocated shoulders, broken thumbs, wrenched wrists, hips, knees. One thing’s for sure: Becoming a monster sure as hell saved her joints. 

_“It was him or you, Katie.”_

_Gerard’s hand rests on her shoulder, comfortingly, like he hadn’t arranged for them to meet like this, like he hadn’t made this happen. But Kate understands the meaning beneath the arbitrary circumstances. It rings in her chest, bright and raging and golden-red, like an alpha’s eyes. This? This was as close to “controlled circumstances” as anyone could ever get with one of these… things._

_"We hunt those that hunt us."_

So here she is, in this space for knives, and claws, and blood. This is where the Code plays out. This is the ink it’s written in, the page it’s inscribed on. The two of them. 

_We hunt those who hunt us._

It’s a tautology; an endless cycling, without beginning or ending. The other families act like the Code puts the burden of proof on the monsters. Kate knows better. As a human, she knew well the story of the Beast of Gevaudan—the genesis of her family, their origin, the first blow. 

As the beast, she knows something else. 

_We hunt those who hunt us._

_We hunt._ It’s the more honest version. The hunters, the animals; they hunt each other. Chase each other in an endless cycle in a world apart from everyone else, apart from humanity. Us or them, always. Anything else is trying to invent something noble out of something that fundamentally _isn’t_. 

Of all people, Kate should know. 

Kate knows she’s supposed to be the prey in this scenario; but really, that’s what she always was before, too. She basically patented this angle of approach to a target, so it’s not like she’s going to be caught by surprise. 

If this girl thinks she’s got one up on _Kate_, she’s got another think coming. 

So Kate doesn’t bite her throat, doesn’t spill her blood, doesn’t devour her whole. Yet. 

After all, she can play with her food before she eats it. 

//

A room is maybe not the best place for them, but they’ve already wrenched one of the bathroom stall walls out of place, and this is the only other place they’re going to get any privacy, and she’s _not_ fucking out in the bushes somewhere. Still, she’s probably gonna owe some extra money when this is over. 

Gerard can foot the bill for that. From the grave. 

Kate kicks the door to her room closed behind her. It rattles the frame. Faith doesn’t seem to notice; her eyes are only for Kate, devouring, and you could be forgiven for confusing the way she’s reading Kate’s body for sexual lust. Kate is smarter than that, though. 

She doesn’t mind the eyes on her scars, and Faith doesn’t seem to mind them, either. Faith’s eyes flare and her head tilts. 

Kate’s got her tally right on her skin—at least from before Peter got to her. Right next to all the vulnerable places on her body; claw marks on her thigh, her neck; stab wounds; and of course, the bullets. 

It’s not like Kate cared much whether her targets were monsters the way Gerard thought of them. 

_If you want to try_, Kate asks wordlessly, _Just imagine what_ isn’t _on my skin._

Faith’s skin is smooth, backing up Kate’s supernatural hypothesis—although Kate still can’t see where Faith keeps that level of mojo, which is new—with the exception of a messy, shiny scar on her abdomen. It’s Kate’s turn to tilt her head, interest piqued. That’s not a wound any mere mortal is going to walk away from, generally. 

Well, Faith could’ve been lucky. 

Kate doesn’t think the people who made Faith would’ve left this kind of thing to chance. 

Faith’s jaw tightens and her hand twitches, like her body instinctively wants to cover the scar. It’s the only time her enthusiasm visibly falters, and even then, it’s only for a moment. 

Kate triangulates half a dozen ways this could play out. She already knows Faith doesn’t have a weapon on her; but that’s moot, because she also knows that Faith _is_ a weapon in her own right. 

She half-expects Faith to insist on topping; bottoming is the vulnerable position, it’s the bait Kate set for so many “predators” before, and even people who _think_ they’re ready to die have hard lines show up in surprising places. They don’t willingly put themselves in the jaws of the monster, for instance. 

Faith does. 

Faith looks delighted in a way that has nothing to do with finding her prey when Kate shows her teeth, drags them along Faith’s bare skin—the curve of her hip, right over the soft vulnerable belly—comes hard around Kate’s fingers with her teeth scraping hard enough to leave angry red lines on Faith’s thigh. 

Kate doesn’t expect Faith to drag her up and kiss her with her mask on, or her tongue scraping Kate’s incisors—but everybody’s got their kinks. The mountain ash capsule Faith passes into Kate's mouth with her tongue is easy enough to hold in the roof of her mouth, drop on the covers when she moves down Faith's body, and brush off the side of the bed. 

She’s a girl after Kate’s own heart, at least. 

Kate doesn’t catch a glimpse of—anything. Fangs, fur, eyes, tail—nothing. No heat or chill or buzz or burn of magic. Whatever Faith is, she’s also human—even with how she’s kept pace with Kate all night. 

Kate has a feeling that whatever weapon this girl is, Faith wasn’t meant for things like her. And she’s not the kind of monster Kate was made to kill—not that that ever stopped her before. 

Maybe it’s the jaguar. Or maybe it’s Kate getting soft. Is this how the Hales ended up dead? 

_Do the honorable thing. Follow the code._

Shuffle off. “Shuffle off”—from Gerard. “Shuffle off” from Peter. “Shuffle off” from the Calaveras. “Shuffle off” from Gerard again—from her own family, she couldn’t stop thinking of Gerard as her _family_. It made her susceptible, made her suggestible, to the offer of reconciliation, acceptance—of _life_. The life she lost—she could have a semblance of it back. If only she made good on what Gerard wanted her to do. 

She’d moved toward it from a place that exists far beyond her own consciousness, beyond her own self-control—towards life. 

And Gerard had used that impulse _towards life_ against her. To control her. To lie to her. To blind her to the thing she already knew, if she’d ever allowed herself to see: Gerard would never have accepted a shifter as his family. She couldn’t be both one of them and the thing that hunts them. 

But she believed he would’ve made an exception. For her. Gerard made exceptions all the time; for himself, for his followers, when they did what he wanted. For her, when she did something that benefited him. 

Kate had always imagined—returning from the dead to find _Allison_ dead had only solidified it, only brought it into laser-sharp focus—that Gerard had had _some_ code of his own, been guided by some belief or conviction. _We hunt those who hunt us_. Family, he’d always told her, was everything. 

If she’d listened, if she’d remembered, if she hadn’t been so blinded by her desire to belong again, she’d have seen it. She’d have known. The rage that went through her when she found out what had happened to Allison—that was the only possibility, in her mind. Once someone you loved had died, even if you’d been wrong in your relationship with them, even if you’d been _so wrong_, the only right and real response if you found out they were alive was to want to bring them close. To be glad they still existed. 

Gerard’s code had only ever been whatever Gerard wanted. And what Gerard wanted was dead monsters. If he had to pretend to love a few along the way to get to his goal, well, that was just the price he had to pay. 

Kate knew that lesson well. 

Who are they, anyways? —The men who made Faith, that is. Nothing like her; otherwise they wouldn’t have needed her. They were afraid; of getting their hands dirty, of getting too close, of losing their _humanity_. So they needed a proxy. Make a monster to kill a monster. 

What Faith is—what Kate is—their _existence_ is a violation of whatever code the men behind them claim to follow. The people who made them wanted to make a heaven on Earth for humans; Faith and Kate were never meant to see it. 

But they needed _her_ to make it happen. 

They needed _them_. 

When it’s Kate’s turn… Well. She’s played this role plenty of times. 

When Kate slides off the bed to get her clothes, Faith doesn't move to stop her. Faith also doesn’t move to do the same behind her, a particular outward stillness reaching her ears, and a concurrent spike in heart rate. Kate sighs, and doesn’t bother reaching for her clothes. She’s not giving Faith that particular advantage. “Are we really gonna do this?” She asks over her shoulder. 

That seems to catch Faith off-guard for some reason. But she recovers. “You think I won’t? Because— What, because you fucked me?” She scoffs. 

“No. Because “suicide by monster” is a bad look on you.” 

“I ain’t dead yet.” 

“Yeah, no thanks to you.” 

Kate hears Faith open her mouth, then shut it again. Traces of stress spike through her scent. Kate feels her lips curve in a smile. 

“If you wanna try tonguing someone mountain ash,” Kate says, “Maybe try that with someone who hasn’t used that trick more than a dozen times.” Granted, the aftertaste is a lot worse now than it used to be. 

Faith clenches her jaw; her fists tighten in the blankets. 

“Who was he?” Kate asks. Faith frowns, caught off guard. 

“… Who?” Faith offers after a few heartbeats, clearly expecting some clarification in the intervening moments. Good. Keep that System Two brain engaged. 

“The guy you used to kill people for. Your dad? Your daddy?” Faith’s face flickers, briefly, mouth turning down slightly. Caught. 

Yeah, this girl is not a professional killer. Born hunter; but not a professional killer. Not that the difference matters much, when one’s after you. 

“What is this?” Faith tries to plaster on a sneer. “Fucking _therapy_? You’re almost as bad as Angel.” 

Kate feels her eyebrow rise sharply. “I find that hard to believe. His name is literally _Angel_. He sounds like a tool.” 

Faith’s expression says it all. 

“You’re a hunter, right? You kill animals for people who either can’t or won’t do what you can.” 

“That’s _not_ how it was.” Faith growls. 

So she loved him, then. Sucks. 

“He needed what you had.” 

Faith looks stricken, or as close as Kate imagines she’s going to get right now. “That’s not how it was. He _cared_ about me.” 

“Then he died before he ran out of use for you.” Kate _doesn’t_ carry one particular scar on her stomach, the one from the wolfsbane bullet that Gerard meant to kill the monster wearing his daughter’s face. “You were always better than him.” 

Faith goes pale and looks down. “That’s not true.” 

“Oh, please. If you grow a conscience on me I _will_ eat you.” 

Faith looks up after a moment, a familiar suspicion etching itself into her face. “Why the hell are we having this conversation, exactly? You wanna—what, hold hands and sing _kumbayah_ before we fight?” She’s finding her feet and the way back to her contract. 

It's a valid question. Kate remembers the awful weight settling in her gut in an abandoned bathroom, looking at the razor blade in her hand. Remembers the weight settling into her limbs as Gerard's wolfsbane started to drain her strength. Remembers the fear exploding through her veins as she realized her father really was going to leave her alone in a room with a raging werewolf. 

Remembers the awful weight of _after_, waking up after the blood loss, the healing, the shifting. Sticky with dried blood—some of it hers, some of it not—and the weight of waking up after, by all rights, by all codes, she shouldn't have. After becoming something to be used, to be feared—becoming _unusable_. Ruined as a hunter, then as a daughter, then as a weapon. Waking up more question than answer, with the thing that defined her whole life up until that moment categorically denied to her. 

No place in this world for her anymore, but still standing, like a shadow in a foggy mirror. 

“They’re the ones who die without us. Have a little more self-respect than dying without him.” 

Faith looks at her. Kate holds her gaze. It’s a long moment, and she has to see it through to the end. _Are you gonna go for it?_

//

Riding in the first goddamn car she can catch out of town in the blue predawn, Kate lets herself look down at her hands. Human-looking. She hasn’t seen a hint that Faith might be following her this whole time. 

Her training tells her she's running—like prey. She's not setting up an ambush, or recouping for another strike. 

But it feels a hell of a lot like _stopping_.

**Author's Note:**

> Realistically, this is the start to a minimum-80k slow burn.


End file.
